An interview with David Zonsheine, one of the founders of Courage to Refuse. He and his group were nominated for the Nobel Peace prize.
To be a Zionist today means to refuse, Zonsheine says. ‘If a soldier or an officer in the regular army refuses and calls me, he will know that he will get a loving embrace from a person who could be his company commander. He will have someone to talk to. To be a Zionist today means to refuse to serve in the territories. That is a new idea in the Israeli society. Zionism is refusal to serve in the territories. That is the arena of the true war. After all, why did I refuse? Do I have a problem with doing reserve duty? Do I have a problem about going to Nablus? I walked around the Casbah in Nablus like it was my house. Is that courage? Courage is to say `I am not running away.’ I stand in front of all my detractors on the right and on the left, and I say, I am a company commander in an elite unit. You are all insane. You have gone nuts. You have taken Zionism to a place where God knows what you did to it, and you even wrapped it in poison candies and stuffed it into my mouth. But today I say to you: I will do everything that has to be done for this country, but I will refuse to do duty in the territories, because this is the true Zionism. Even if a million people tell me I am wrong, I am not wrong.’”
